The Last Leg; 6 years later, debt free in 2021

greensalad

Finally sitting down at the computer for a bit while dinner cooks!

Today I've been cleaning the house thoroughly. Dining room properly scrubbed (normally I just dust but this time I steam cleaned the floors and got into all the little corners etc), same with the living room which is now sparkling. I'll do the kitchen after dinner though it's actually not too bad. Upstairs still a mess!

Yesterday we had a good day just hanging out and watching films. I also did some CAD drawings for woodworking. I wanted to get the charity woodworkers in town to build me a herb planter but I've spec'd it out and I think I can do it myself much cheaper. My Dad said he wants his tools back but I can hold them hostage at least until lockdowns are over because he won't be able to come and collect them. I have actually asked for my own jigsaw for my birthday to replace the one he lent me, but for some reason whenever I ask for powertools people decide it's a silly present idea. I guess it wouldn't be a problem if I was a man huh!

House is looking so much tidier now that I have been doing a good job of getting rid of things. Can't donate at the moment due to lockdown, but I've been putting everything in the boot of my car as storage so as soon as we're allowed I can take it to the charity warehouse. 

Have also listed the wheely trolley I used for sewing bits on FB and hoping to get some good money for it. I actually really like it, but since paring down all my bits I just don't have anything to go in it anymore and it's sitting unused. I'll only part with it if I can get good money for it.

Other than that, nothing exciting money wise. Just counting down the days until I can make my final CC payment at the end of the month.

greensalad

Someone came to collect the trolley for £20! Not bad, I had lots of enquiries after it, I shoulda put the price up a little more but oh well. 

I've got £50 pinned on the fridge now. All money I can use for gardening bits come the end of the month.

Mum asked what I wanted for my birthday as people are asking. I suggested some nice wooden gardening tools and a new pair of gloves. Let's hope!

greensalad

Don't know why but have been really feeling unbothered about coming on here and writing updates. Don't know why. It's not like I haven't had exciting things going on, I actually paid off my CC and my partner paid off his student loan last week, but I haven't really felt like much fanfare about it!

Anyway I thought I should come back and update at least just to keep me on track.

So we managed to get the cash together for our big tax bill (that was really student loan bill) and that is all paid off now. OH will probably still get charged this month but we're hoping we can claim part of this month's charge back and then going forward he shouldn't be charged anymore.

My CC is now completely paid off, zero! Quite a weird feeling. I have no debt except student loan anymore! Only CC we have left is my OH's which we're still chipping away at (paying enough to have it paid off end of 0% period this time next year, but we'll likely pay it off sooner).

We didn't add much at all to house savings this month as obviously everything was directed towards that tax bill. But now it's out of our hair our next task is to set aside as much house cash as possible so we can fill our LISAs as soon as April rolls around and we can get the 21/22 bonus. Having plugged it into the spreadsheet, we should have enough saved to fill one of our LISAs literally on the day the new financial year starts, and then just need to top up the second one the following month to have them complete. So by May we should have £20k+ in house savings.

Also got some good news at work which is that I'm now entitled for holiday uplift pay, some new government ruling? Because I do a lot of overtime basically if I take holiday I'm given a top-up based on my average overtime taken. This was a real surprise today and they backdated it based on the time I took off over Christmas which means I got an extra £280 (pretax) in my paycheque this month. 

OH has finally found out that he won't be getting a bonus. Apparently his company only does bonuses for higher-ups. But what he's been told is instead the payrises year on year are better than average. Mine is about 1-2% so we're wondering what his will be. He's due to find out next month I think, or at least in the spring.

Other than that, nada going on! Trying to be better with grocery budgeting, though we've just put together an expensive shop for my birthday weekend next week as we're having a 5 course meal at home! I'm very excited.

Meal plan coming on Wednesday delivery:

Wednesday: Payday takeaway treat
Thursday: Oven fish and chips with curry sauce
Friday: Patty & Bun meal kit burgers with tots
Saturday: Oven pizza
Sunday: Birthday dinner! Burrata salad, scallops with lemon and caper sauce and potato rosti, cheese course, creme brulée, lemon victoria sponge
Monday: tuna pasta bake
Tuesday: Waldorf salad

greensalad

OH got paid today (usually same day for both of us but mine was early for some reason). 

Having used all our spare cash to pay off tax bill early a few days ago, we didn't get much house saving done this month, which is fine really but I have to remind myself it's not because we threw money away but because we used it on something more pressing!

So I only chucked £91 into the house savings pot for this month. Next few months though our target will be saving a further £8k to fill LISAs and we should manage that by May which is very exciting. 

I also did our car insurance renewal today. I was pleasantly surprised that it was much lower than I was expecting. I'd set aside £360 (previously I'd set aside £450 because we normally pay monthly and I didn't think it'd be much different...), it turns out for top tier premium insurance it's only £299! Very pleased. We discussed what to do with the extra and decided to put it into high quality roadside breakdown cover, including Europe. Hopefully the world might be somewhat back to normal by March 2022 and we do enjoy driving to France & Belgium so it made sense (and was only £5 extra).

Made me realise how nice it is coming to the end of my debt journey where I can pay money towards things that really do make life easier like having strong insurance and breakdown cover and not having to put every penny towards debt repayments. Only OH's CC now to pay off this summer! But we're still paying off £300 a month. 

Not much else money saving wise. Fingers crossed out upcoming MOT comes in under my estimate. We've got about £400 set aside for the MOT plus brake discs we know need repairing. It's so nice having money set aside and not having to worry. 

Kakiste

Great news about paying off the tax bill!
I'm with you on looking ahead to what debt repayment money could be used for instead. I'm already planning the holiday I'm going to book when I've paid off everything. (I've not been abroad since I was 16 and Daughter has never been out of the country or on a plane so I'm very excited to show her other countries ) 

greensalad

Well we've officially canned our US holiday. We're due to go in June... we're just not confident that the situation will change, and at present we can't even enter the US (unless we have a good reason which we don't!) so we decided to convert to an open ticket and cancel everything...

We pulled £1,500 out of savings that were set aside for the holiday and put it into house savings (Premium Bonds). I've also adjusted our spreadsheet to not save the rest that was due to be spent in June. Still waiting for about £500 refunded from the car we'd booked and our airport hotel. Hopefully that'll arrive next week and we can add that to the house savings too.

Also having a bit of a brainwave/discussion last night about what we want, affordability etc. Originally we've always been planning to go for a £450,000 house budget and get a 10% deposit. The £450k really only became the budget because it's the ceiling on the LISA bonus (worth £4k to us). But we've done quite a lot of affordability checks and we actually qualify for something well over £500k, top level being around £650k! We'd never buy a house that expensive... but we were talking about it and thinking to ourselves why are we limiting to what the LISAs give us for the sake of £4k when the difference could be a house that ticks every single box and is very futureproof (currently looking at something slightly nicer than what we have but not by much...).

Due to the government letting us withdraw from LISAs penalty-free until April, we'd only lose the £2k bonus (money that wasn't really ours anyway) and the £2k we'd planned to gain in 21/22 financial year. Anyway, so we're going to think about it over the next few months and consider whether or not we pull out of LISAs while we still have the chance and go for a more expensive property.

Also still discussed with my Dad the possibility of us doing the Family Springboard mortgage with Barclays. We've discussed it a few times with him. He's up for it, and we'd go for the 5% deposit option meaning we'd need to save around £22-£25k. I think seeing as we'd have that amount of cash this summer (cancelling holiday has brought it forward a bit) it might be worth speaking to some brokers. Not really ready to get my hopes up because we're pinning ourselves on one product, but you never know.

Sarahwithlove

It's all very exciting. I guess the thing I would only say is do you need a property that's over 450k and all the expenses that come with it or could you find something in the budget? Just because you can afford it doesn't necessarily mean you have to go for it. Have you looked to see what 450k would get you before you pull them out if it's not actually needed? Decision has to be yours but thinking long term an extra 50k mortgage means you could potentially be paying it for longer then if you went for a 450k mortgage and just overpaid the difference. It's also about quality of life and whether paying less on a mortgage to have a bigger property if its not needed. Just playing devil's advocate.

greensalad

Sarahwithlove said:

It's all very exciting. I guess the thing I would only say is do you need a property that's over 450k and all the expenses that come with it or could you find something in the budget? Just because you can afford it doesn't necessarily mean you have to go for it. Have you looked to see what 450k would get you before you pull them out if it's not actually needed? Decision has to be yours but thinking long term an extra 50k mortgage means you could potentially be paying it for longer then if you went for a 450k mortgage and just overpaid the difference. It's also about quality of life and whether paying less on a mortgage to have a bigger property if its not needed. Just playing devil's advocate.

I know what you mean. We definitely don't want to overstretch ourselves. When I put the calculation into Barclays affordability checker it gives us a range of £530k - £620k for a mortgage. We wouldn't even go for £530k, so I find it funny that what we'd be after isn't even in the "range" they feel is relevant to show us.

I've crunched the numbers quite a lot. We're in a very lucky position that we are both high earners (we both chose to go into careers that we knew paid well, so I don't necessarily count us as "lucky" because my job is pretty boring and unglamorous but well paid, but what I do know is that we are in a privileged position to be able to afford quite a lot). We were looking at mortgages costing around the same as what we pay in rent, but really we're already in a position where we're saving several thousand per month so I definitely think we can stretch a little further.

The market really opens up over £450k in the area we're looking. Actually, we rarely see £450k on the nose come onto the market (we've been tracking it for a year), it seems like the choices we have currently are all more like £400k - £425k, based on that just being market availability. There seems to be a lot more around £475k - £500k.

Sarahwithlove

Sounds like you might just have to take the hit then and withdraw from LISA whilst you can fee free and get the property you want. Do any of the lower end ones offer the possibility of expanding it to make it into the property you wanted? Lots of pros and cons for both really. 

greensalad

Sarahwithlove said:

Sounds like you might just have to take the hit then and withdraw from LISA whilst you can fee free and get the property you want. Do any of the lower end ones offer the possibility of expanding it to make it into the property you wanted? Lots of pros and cons for both really. 

Yes that's what we were looking at, opportunity to extend. There were quite a few that had really tiny bedrooms that we figured could be converted into stairs for a loft conversion to get a better sized room. I'm always looking at each property that comes up on the Zoopla alert and looking at its potential. I guess I just sometimes think what's the point in buying something cheaper than we can afford, going through the whole rigmarole of extension, the costs associated (saving up for that too), when we could just buy a property better suited from the start.

The conversion potential is sort if my future-proofing. So looking at something that's OK now but would benefit from an addition in, say, 5-10 years time.